O'Reilly Factor

In Graff Firing?

By M. D. Drysdale

id the firing of Chris Graff as the head of Associated Press in Vermont have anything to do with Bill O'Reilly at Fox News?

In his forthcoming book, "Dateline Vermont," the longtime newsman includes a chapter about being abruptly fired by the Associated Press this March 20 for reasons which still have not been adequately explained. The firing was protested by newspapers across Vermont and by Vermont's entire Congressional delegation.

AP's letter to Graff said he was fired for sending out on the AP wire an opinion piece by Sen. Pat Leahy about open government, without properly identifying it as opinion. However, this explanation is questionable, especially since Graff had done the exact same thing the previous year in observance of "Sunshine Week" and his bosses had not complained at all.

In "Dateline Vermont," Graff notes that the terms of his severance agreement with AP do not allow him to "speculate" further on why he was fired. However, his chapter conspicuously points out that his firing directly followed the Judge Cashman controversy, in which Fox's O'Reilly went on the air every night for three weeks with strident criticism of Judge Cashman for his sentencing of a child molester.

O'Reilly's criticism extended to many more Vermont targets, even including a suggested boycott of Vermont products and tourism. And O'Reilly also directly criticized Graff by name, as "Dateline Vermont" points out.

A Jan. 12 broadcast blasted Graff for a profile he had written of the judge, and a few days later singled out "Associated Press reporter Christopher Graff" again. O'Reilly also later announced on the air, erroneously, that Graff had been "pulled off" the Cashman case, the book states.

That, Graff reminisces in "Dateline Vermont," was "a turbulent time for us in the Montpelier bureau and me in particular, but one that did not appear to jeopardize my job. Throughout it, in fact, I felt I had the support of the AP's corporate brass in New York."

It was just two months later, after sending out the Leahy column for Sunshine Week, that Graff was fired.